The Center for Interventions to Enhance Community Health (CiTECH) is a unique partnership between the School of Social Work and the Department of Psychiatry that is dedicated to improving community behavioral health services. The mission of the Center is to enhance the quality and length of life of individuals living with behavioral health conditions through the development, evaluation, and implementation of innovative community-based programs. To accomplish this mission, CiTECH seeks to reduce the decades-long gap between the development of an effective practice and its routine use in the community through:
- Developing and testing effective community-based interventions to improve health, with an emphasis on behavioral health;
- Partnering with community agencies to the ensure “real world” readiness of developed intervention models and services;
- Integrate behavioral health services into everyday community settings to help people where they are and to prevent disability.
The Center provides research infrastructure, mentorship, pilot awards, and community partnerships to support scholarly research on community-based interventions to improve behavioral health across the lifespan. Priority areas include youth well-being, mood disorders and suicide, addiction, and psychosis, with faculty and community experts represented in each of these distinct areas.
